h2cm = Bayesian Quarters?

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

The Bayesian approach allows human insight, subjective though it is, to be combined with statistical information, limited though it may be. It is not surprising that this blurring of the line between the methodologies of the sciences and the humanities has attracted passionate supporters as well as furious enemies on both sides of the cultural divide.

Von Baeyer (2003) p.79.

von Baeyer, H.C. (2003) Information: The New Language of Science, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.

ERCIM News 82: Computational Biology - On the Verge of Widespread Impact

Dear ERCIM News Reader

ERCIM News No. 82 has just been published at http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/

Special Theme: "Computational Biology"

- coordinated by: Gunnar Klau, CWI, The Netherlands and Jacques Nicolas, INRIA, France

- featuring a keynote by Dirk J. Evers, Director, Computational Biology, Illumina, Inc.

Next issue: October 2010 - Special Theme: "Cloud Computing Platforms, Software, and Applications"

(see call for articles)

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News.

Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

Best regards,

Peter Kunz
ERCIM News central editor

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Of specific interest to me pages 59-60:

Graph Transformation for Consolidation of Creativity Sessions Results
by Peter Dolog
idSpace

A paper by Anzures-Cabrera & Higgins, Graphical displays for meta-analysis: An overview with suggestions for practice

The interesting paper below is currently available online:

Graphical displays for meta-analysis: An overview with suggestions for practice,
Judith Anzures-Cabrera, Julian P. T. Higgins

Keywords: meta-analysis • graphical displays • forest plot • funnel plot • Galbraith plot • L'Abbe plot

Abstract:

Meta-analyses are fundamental tools for collating and synthesizing large amounts of information, and graphical displays have become the principal tool for presenting the results of multiple studies of the same research question. We review standard and proposed graphical displays for presentation of meta-analytic data, and offer our recommendations on how they might be presented to provide the most useful and user-friendly illustrations. We concentrate on graphs that specifically aim to present similar sorts of univariate results from multiple studies. We start with forest plots and funnel plots, and proceed to Galbraith (or radial) plots, L'Abbé (and related) plots, further plots useful for investigating heterogeneity, plots useful for model diagnostics and plots for illustrating likelihoods and Bayesian meta-analyses.
Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Judith Anzures-Cabrera, Julian P. T. Higgins (2010) Graphical displays for meta-analysis: An overview with suggestions for practice, Research Synthesis Methods, 1, 1, 66-80.
DOI: 10.1002/jrsm.6

<->

I will explore these plot / diagram forms and update the diagrams listing on Links II accordingly. I wonder if this journal will re-visit the question of visualization methods in the humanities - social sciences?

ERCIM News "Computational Science/Scientific Computing - Simulation & Modelling for Research and Industry"

Dear ERCIM News Reader,

ERCIM News No. 81 has just been published at http://ercim-news.ercim.eu/

Special Theme:
"Computational Science/Scientific Computing -
Simulation & Modelling for Research and Industry

- coordinated by: Ulrich Trottenberg, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), Germany, and Han La Poutré, CWI, The Netherlands

- featuring a keynote by Kostas Glinos, European Commission, DG Information Society and Media, Head of GEANT and e- Infrastructure Unit.

Next issue: July 2010

Special Theme: "Computational Biology" (see call for articles)

Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News.
Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.

Best regards,
Peter Kunz

<->

[PJ] This issue includes:

p. 44 A Computational Approach to Patient Flow Logistics in Hospitals by Anke Hutzschenreuter, Peter Bosman and Han La Poutré

p.48 Accurate Reconstruction of Single Individual Haplotypes for Personalized Medicine by Filippo Geraci and Marco Pellegrini

p.56 EXTRA Helps SMEs Assess their Knowledge Management Practices by Sanae Saadaoui and Frederic F. Monfils

p.57 The ACM Digital Library at the forefront of Semantic Technology by Stephanie Parker

Lovelace, women's IT and QUADratic equations

When you stop and think about it - really stop and think, the foresight of Charles Babbage was astonishing, even though he did not quite achieve his objectives. What is even more amazing then is the role that Ada Lovelace played in the development of computing and scientific computing.

This post is to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day. As per this post 12 months ago, I am and always will be celebrating Enid Mumford and her work on the need and importance of sociotechnical insights when we attempt to apply IT in the work place*. Her work also exemplifies what women can and do contribute to IT.

In terms of the 3R's I am 'literate', but real maths evades me at least the level of ability I wish I had. Namely, the expertise to exercise some of puzzles in the social sciences.

BBC radio 4's Woman's Hour has regularly featured maths education for women and girls, bemoaning the maths abilities of the female population. Some maths has come to me through programming in BASIC, sorting, recursion, functions and using SPSS (DOS version!).

They should teach more programming in schools. Computing and maths are often equated (sorry!) and fittingly the BBC have also featured the genius of Ada Lovelace.

So all these things are connected: the pioneering insights of Ada Lovelace, the state of mathematics education for girls and how girl's are engaged in IcT today globally.

Additional links:

Gender IT: http://www.genderit.org/en/index.shtml

Europa: Women and ICT Status Report 2009

Association for Progressive Communications: http://www.apc.org/

APC Women

Alice innovative 3D programming environment

Image source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/01/2010_07_mon.shtml

* Jones, P. (2009) Socio-Technical Structures, the Scope of Informatics and Hodges’ model, IN, Staudinger, R., Ostermann, H., Bettina Staudinger, B. (Eds.), Handbook of Research in Nursing Informatics and Socio-Technical Structures, Idea Group Publishing, Inc.

'Information' a definition

Exactly what information is (at least one very useful technical definition of it) is answered by the mathematical theory of information. A rich field with many applications to biology, linguistics, and electronics, the theory is couched in the language of bits, each bit of information conveying one binary choice. [Hence 5 bits, for example, convey 5 such choices and are sufficient to distinguish from among 32 (or 2⁵) alternatives, there being 32 (2⁵) possible yes-no sequences of length 5.] Bits serve too as units in the numerical measure of such notions as the entropy of information sources, the capacity of communication channels, and the redundancy of messages.

Source: Paulos, J.A., (1991) Binary numbers and codes, Beyond Innumeracy, p.26.

Additional links:

W2tQ 'information'

W2tQ 'Ye Olde paper: 1996 "Humans, information and science'

Two vacancies students - young professionals @ WHO Geneva

Marvellous opportunities. ...

Dear colleagues,

Please help us in disseminating two vacancy notices issued by the World Health Organization for opportunities for promising students and young professionals in our Geneva headquarters.

In particular, we are looking for persons with quantitative skills to work on global health workforce information, monitoring and research. We are currently looking to recruit one full-time professional (as per the vacancy notice HQ/08/HQ/HRH/FT861 - see link below).

We are also continuously open to offering (unpaid) internship opportunities.

Full details can be found at: http://www.who.int/employment/en/

Thanking you in advance,

Neeru Gupta

Demographer-Statistician, PhD
Department of Human Resources for Health
World Health Organization
Avenue Appia 20, Geneva 1211, Switzerland
Tel.: 41-22-791-1066 / Fax: 41-22-791-4747
Email: guptan at who.int

My source: ESDS Government mailing list

ERCIM News: special theme - "Safety-Critical Software"

ERCIM News no. 75 has just been published:

Special Theme: "Safety-Critical Software"
Featuring a keynote by Gérard Berry, Chief Scientist, Esterel Technologies; Member of the ERCIM Advisory Board; Member Académie des sciences, Académie des technologies, and Academia Europaea.

Next issue: January 2009 - Special Theme: "Sensor Web"
(Thank you for your interest in ERCIM News.
Feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.)

Source: Peter Kunz; ercim.org

Additional links:
International Science Grid This Week
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE CHALLENGING: The user and the future of information and communication technologies. A transdisciplinary conference organised by COST Action 298 "Participation in the Broadband Society"